College-age kids these days are pretty good at a few things: selfies, social oversharing and staring into screens. But can you leverage that self-obsession into a mechanism for learning? The mad scientists at North Carolina State University think so and they've got a program to prove it. Dubbed JavaTutor, the software's aimed at teaching our future workforce the basics of computer science. And it does this by tracking facial expressions -- using the Computer Expressions Recognition Toolbox, or CERT, as its base -- during online tutorial sessions. Frown and the AI knows you're frustrated; concentrate intently and the same automated emotion detection applies. So, what's the end sum of all this? Well, it seems the research team wants to gauge the effectiveness of online courses and use the cultivated feedback to better tailor the next iteration of the JavaTutor system. But the greater takeaway here, folks, is that at NCSU, online tutoring learns you!
Filed under: Science, Software
Source: North Carolina State University